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SCO licences go on sale in Australia, NZ

The SCO Group has started selling its intellectual property licence in Australia and New Zealand, according to a company media release.

The licence costs $A999 per server processor and $A285 per desktop processor.

SCO claims that some UNIX code which it owns has been incorporated into Linux; this is the basis for selling the licences.

"By purchasing the license, customers are properly compensating SCO for the UNIX source code, derivative UNIX code and other UNIX-related intellectual property and copyrights owned by SCO as it is currently found in Linux," the release says.

SCO later expanded its claims against IBM to $US3 billion in June when it said it was withdrawing IBM's licence for its own Unix, AIX.

In July last year, SCO demanded that Linux users obtain licences for using what it claims to be its own UNIX code. Later in the year, SCO extended the deadline for obtaining these licences.

Novell has contested SCO's claims to ownership of UNIX and says that even though SCO has some UNIX rights, Novell has retained the right to compel SCO to waive or revoke any of its (SCO's) rights under the contract.